“Speaking as a poet, I have come to recognize that raw emotions are like rare natural resources: they must be actively mined through some extraction process with tools. They do not obey ordinary…

  “Summer’s heat brings changes. The exuberant flush of wild growth and mad flowering, the unstoppable compulsion to reproduce that defines callow springtime, gives way to a slower-paced savoring of the gifts of…

“Clark Gable is remembered as a thrice-divorced and five-time married screen actor, but he understood what ‘home’ meant: a place you approach knowing someone inside is listening for your footsteps. Whether it’s an…

“So what constitutes a memorable meal? Note that I didn’t say perfect. Is it the gastronomy, the skillful marriage of the finest ingredients with a technical expertise developed over decades on the job;…

“How did the writers of ‘Weekly Hubris’ come together, readers often ask me? This month, I asked my Contributors to weigh in, in order of appearance in my life . . . and…

“When I was in Timişoara, Romania, I discovered these beautiful, tall churches made of mud and straw with exaggeratedly steep roofs. The churches, however, were so small inside they were almost of no…

“Most universes likely blink out as quickly as they arise. They persist for only a few nanoseconds, and fail to produce even a single flower. Some universes, such as ours, are relatively stable.…

“After all, you might postulate, Socrates himself/Was an infantryman, wearing leather with nameless stains,/On latrine duty, chewing olives, pursuing the elf/Called the soul as he chatted. Serene, undismayed/He lived and stayed sane .…

“My years (and years) of practical, hands-on engineering experience (changing light bulbs, cleaning out the crumb tray in the toaster, and rewiring the power cord on my Hoover Acc-u-Vac) had enabled me immediately…

“It was an elderly Serbian who said that, in the Sombor of the Hapsburg era, a Becksi Skolovan person spoke German, Hungarian, and Serbian, the better to communicate with his fellow citizens in…